Episode 487: Three Hour End of the Year Extravaganza

December 21, 2017| Jonah Falcon| 0 Comment| 9:05 pm

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It’s the last Gaming Podcast episode of 2018, and it’s three hours long! Well, it’s to make up for the fact we won’t be doing one next week. There are only two news items, but the entire bulk of the episode is our Game Awards for 2017, and we took a different tack than most sites and podcasts by inventing our own Awards Categories!

The news we do discuss include:

Soulcalibur 6 finally brings the tale of swords and souls to PC
The Witcher 3 Xbox One X update could add support for HDR displays

We also discussed the game we’re looking forward to the most in 2018 — let us know which one you are interested in!

0 thoughts on “Episode 487: Three Hour End of the Year Extravaganza”

Jeffy says:

December 23, 2017 at 8:56 pm

Red Dead Redemption 2, baby. Can’t wait for it!

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Ralf says:

January 1, 2018 at 7:26 am

Hi guys.
Thanks for this big long episode. I really enjoyed it, i like long ones …. you get more from the same source 🙂
I hope all of you had a nice Christmas and a good start in the new year.
The games i am waiting for in 2018 are:
Last of us 2
Bloodstained
Magic The Gathering – Arena
Nu no kuni 2
Dead stranding (or maybe 2019?)
Seasons of heaven
Mega man 11
Soul Calibur 6

Magic the Gathering Arena is “only” a card game, and is nearly the same game as already available as MTGO, but it has a different look, more like Hearthstone and i am totally in to card games 🙂
Most of the titles are also not “new” but i really hope that these new parts of the series (can i call it that way, even if its only the second title?) are as good, as the ones before.
I really like your podcast and hope you will do this for a long time in the future 🙂
Greetings from Germany.
Ralf

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Gaming FlashBack: Baldur’s GateGaming FlashBack: Baldur’s Gate

Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.

It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.

The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.

The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).

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Miyamoto Confirms Pikmin GameMiyamoto Confirms Pikmin Game

It seems Miyamoto let it slide that there will be a Pikmin game arriving in the future, for which systems? Probably the Wii if we had to guess, but it wouldn’t be surpising to see it on both their hit product lines.

His exacty words, “We’re making Pikmain.” Nintendo has done well by their little Pikmin friends, a newer franchise with lots of growth potential and fun for the entire family. The Pikmin series was a sleeper title, looking fairly silly in presentation but full of great value in reality.

It’s not surprising to see them spinning a new Pikmin title and we’ll have to hold our breath in anticipation for the fruitful results. As always, Miyamoto isn’t giving any dates… it will be ready when he says it’s ready.

Any Pikmin fans?

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Reportedly we’re going to see smaller 45 nanometer cell processors in 2009 which leads to similar cost savings as we saw in the Xbox 360 hardware. Cost savings appear on the manufacturing side, of course, along with less power consumed by the processor leading to less heat generated by the console.

The Xbox 360 was able to benefit from chip reduction when for stability and overall heat issues, although the stability is still out for debate at the moment. The concept is fairly simple to understand; heat causes problems in closed systems with few fans and a high degree of complex components. Reduce the heat means reducing the overall need to cool and get air flow into the hot little box.

Console hardware is owned by a broad audience, not all of which understand technology and its ability to boil an egg. Consumers toss consoles and their power supplies in closed cases within their entertainment system and restrict air flow further. Any reduction in heat is a good thing for the console developer.